Project Freewheel: DWF Freedom and Independence

Today is the 4th of July - the day Americans celebrate their independence. On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. Here we are 230 years later, and you don't have to be an American to celebrate this day. Autodesk customers worldwide can celebrate the unveiling of the Project Freewheel Technology Preview.

freewheel (frhwl) v. - To operate independently or free of restraints.

The Project Freewheel viewer lets you be free of software installs, is provided for free, and allows people to author their own web sites with DWF independent of Microsoft-specific ActiveX controls. Want to view a DWF file, but don’t want to install viewer software? Want to view a DWF file on: a Mac, a PDA, a Cell Phone, Linux, or in Firefox? Would you like to embed a DWF in your own web page (HTML) and not require visitors to install anything? If so, then the Project Freewheel Technology Preview is for you. This is both a web site where you can enter an URL to a DWF file and view it interactively and a web service that allows you to embed an interactive DWF viewer in your own HTML pages.

Here is an example:

(If you are reading this blog article via an RSS reader, you will not see the sample DWF file. You must use a browser and navigate to http://dwf.blogs.com/beyond_the_paper/2006/07/dwf_freedom_and.html.) Viewing this sample DWF file was made possible by adding a few simple lines to this blog article. You can view your own DWF file with the Project Freewheel viewer by copying and pasting the iframe lines below and modifying the red text to specify an URL to your own DWF file:

<iframe id="dwfframe" width="400" height="400" scrolling="no" src="http://freewheel.labs.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?dwf=http://dwf.blogs.com/articles/R11Shaver2D.dwf">
</iframe>

You can also check out another example on the Project Freewheel Technology Preview server: http://freewheel.labs.autodesk.com.

This technology preview will evolve in the coming weeks. Like the original Declaration of Independence, the current preview is only available in English. In addition, only Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1.5 are supported at this time. Support for Safari and other browsers will be added soon. Updates will be administered through the Autodesk Labs program.

Take the Project Freewheel viewer for a spin and create some fireworks of your own!